Thursday, February 27, 2014

Thanks to Merlin Coverley’s book, Occult
London, I’ve become familiar with a passage from Emanuel Swedenborg,
someone who is otherwise not an entirely open book to me. In April 1745, late one evening, Swedenborg
was eating in the private dining room of a London chop house. He wrote, “I was hungry and ate with a good
appetite. Towards the end of the meal I
noticed a kind of blurring in my vision, it grew dark and I saw the floor
covered with the nastiest crawling animals, like snakes, frogs, and creatures
of that kind. I was amazed, because I was fully conscious and thinking
clearly. After a while the prevailing
darkness was quickly dispelled, and I saw a man sitting in the corner of the
room. Since I was alone, I was quite frightened when he spoke and said, ‘Don’t
eat so much.’”

Let's leave aside the question of
whether snakes and frogs are really the nastiest animals, and move to the eloquent Coverley reaction, “An admonishment to eat less, even when given by a ghostly
figure, would, in itself, seem an inadequate basis with which to embark on a
life of mysticism.” You can say that
again, Merlin. You can say that again.

Above is a picture by Henry
William Bunbury, of Boswell and Johnson in a chop house in London in 1781. Below is the only genuine London chop house I
think I’ve ever been to, the Quality Chop House in Farringdon, open since 1869,
which was obviously a little late for Mr. Swedenborg. I seen to recall the food was pretty good but you ended up having to sharing a table, which was less good, though it wasn't ghostly figures.

Swedenborg also said, “If one tries to
attain complete happiness through eating or sex, or personal power, or even
orderliness, the result is a lopsided catastrophe.” Words to live by.

Friday, February 21, 2014

I was in Glendale, on my way to Quest Diagnostics for a blood test,
when I saw this fabulous cluster of signage for Kabab Way, on South Glendale
Avenue. I was fasting for the test so I couldn’t
go in.

I was reminded of necessary conditions and sufficient conditions, formal
terminology from logic, about which (in truth) I know very little, though in this case I think I understand the basics. “No heartburn” seems a necessary condition
for a decent restaurant, but it just doesn’t seem a sufficient one.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

The Loved One and I have been on one of our desert road trips – to Death
Valley and the East Mojave.Nobody
expects the desert to be the home of haute cuisine, but we ate pretty well
mostly, and always interestingly, although lord knows we ate too much and none
of it was exactly “light” and certainly not “healthful.”So, in the interests of keeping the blog
rolling, here’s what we ate and where, along with some “field notes.”

*

PLACE: Astroburger, Kramer
Junction

WHAT I ATE: Birria – yes birria
– real Mexican goat stew, as good as any I’ve eaten outside of Mexico. Boy, it was meaty and greasy and gamey and flavorful. Menudo was on the menu too.

NOTES: A hipster couple were in
the restaurant – the dude had the porkpie hat and the stylishly unstyled beard,
and said to the very sweet Mexican waitress, “Do you have a vegetarian option?” I was slightly disappointed to find that she did.

*

PLACE: Kristy's Family Restaurant, Ridgecrest

WHAT I ATE: Corned beef hash,
scrambled eggs, hash browns.

NOTES: There was a poor, obese, young
girl, maybe ten years old, in the restaurant with her parents. She was absolutely huge, a hanging belly and
so much fat around her throat that she scarcely had a neck. Of course one wanted to be sympathetic -
maybe it was glandular - but she was eating a gigantic plate of French fries
for breakfast, so maybe it wasn’t only glandular.

*

PLACE: Panamint Springs Resort, Panamint

WHAT I ATE: A fish sandwich –
the fish was battered, which I’d expected, and there was a layer of melted
cheese, which I hadn’t. I know they make
a lot of fuss on “Chopped” about never serving fish and cheese together, which
in general I disagree with, but in this case I think they’d have had a point.

NOTES: A couple of tables away
there were two old guys who looked pretty much like desert rats. One of them hardly spoke, while the other delivered
a continuous monologue. “Now, these
days, I never eat salt, it’s not for medical reasons, I could eat all the salt
I want and still be healthy, but I just don’t.
And you know the interesting thing, now when I eat a stick of celery - it
tastes salty.”

*

PLACE: Forty-Niner Café, Furnace Creek

WHAT I ATE: Breakfast ordered from the side menu: sausage, ham,
potatoes, “seasonal fruit.”

NOTES: The order of fruit was a small
attempt to be healthy. The actual fruit
was unspecified but somehow we knew there was going to be a lot of melon, and
there was. Melon – the fruit that’s
always in season. And yes, that is a map
of Death Valley on the tabletop.

*

PLACE: Badwater Saloon, Stove Pipe Wells

WHAT I ATE: cheese quesadilla for me, chili cheese fries for my
companion. The latter turned out to be
essentially French fries floating in a bowl of chili flavored soup: a bad idea.

NOTES: Having grown up deprived in England I never saw the TV show Death Valley Days, though I knew it existed. However I had no idea there
was a radio show. There in the
restaurant they had a vinyl album on display in a glass case – kind of made you
want to break in.

*

PLACE: Crowbar Cafe & Saloon, Shoshone

WHAT I ATE: Taco salad – which is never as good as you think it’s going
to be, somehow less than the sum of its parts, though this was a perfectly good
example of the breed.

NOTES: I ordered a beer. It was the
coldest beer I ever drank. Not only was there
ice on the outside of the glass, as the beer sat in front of me it froze over,
developing a head of ice. Cool indeed.

*

PLACE:
The Original Pancake House, Primm

WHAT I ATE: Eggs Michael : toasted English muffin,
sausage patties and poached eggs covered with mushroom sherry sauce, served
with four potato pancakes. Sherry sauce
for breakfast? What the hey – I’m on
vacation.

NOTES:
The music playing in the restaurant was Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” first
released in 1965. That’s a very long
“eve,” but the sentiments still seem more or less relevant –

Yeah, my blood's so mad feels like coagulatin'

I'm sitting here just contemplatin'

*

PLACE: Route 62 Diner. Yucca Valley

WHAT I ATE: The Big Bopper (yes, really that’s what it said on the
menu)

NOTES: As the name of my
breakfast suggests, this was eaten in a themed fifties diner, hot rod pictures
on the walls, jukebox console on the table, and curtains that seemed to feature
a Tom of Finland cop.

*

You’ll notice in the pictures how all this food glistens – that’s the fat – and fat (as we know) is flavor – and
sure, nobody held a gun at my head and forced me to eat it, but now that I’m
home I do feel like I need some artery-scraping, and perhaps some unseasonal
fruit.